Not another fucking newsletter

Happy Tuesday from Traded VC! 

👋 Yoo, Joon here!

Yesterday, we got April Fool’d by Unicorn Bakery’s fake VC raise 😂 so we’ve compiled the best VC/startup April Fools’ jokes below 👇

🤡 Best VC April Fools

• NaSe - Suffocation….Using AI
  Andreas Panagiotopoulos raised $12M from Jabroni Capital for NaSe. Thesis: humans have been drawing too much breath contributing to global warming 🌍 NaSe uses AI to moderate your breathing…aka suffocation lmao

• From Podcast to…VC
  Fabian Tausch, host of the German podcast, Unicorn Bakery, announced a $77M VC fund…except the fund isn’t happening. You got us man and even made it to our Dopamine Dealflow

• RIP Business Insiders
  According to Litquidity, Business Insiders filed for bankruptcy… I wish it were April 2nd lol

• Fund of Funds….of Funds of Funds lmao

  Turner Novak did a big one here. Check out Harmonic, the world’s first FoFoFoF with an average investment size of….$9.47 

• Nancy Pelosi Raised $200M Early-Stage Fund
  Top-tier trader and US politician, Nancy Pelosi, raised a $200M fund focused on climate tech and vegan protein bars. This one is from us lol

🧠 Dopamine Dealflow

Small Dopamine

• Turning 2D into Dope Renders 📷
  @vizcom_ raised $20M to leverage how designers already work (not replace them!) 🔥 The round was led by @indexventures 💰 read more

• What. A. Name 👀

  super{set} raised $90M to co-found data and AI companies 🤝 Led by Tom Chavez & Vivek Vaidya, they have a combined two exits that amounted to $1.2B 💸 read more

• Better Access to Baby Products 👶
  New e-commerce startup @shopkidsy is giving access to discounted baby and kids products (clothes, strollers, etc.) 🍼 Huge congrats @sinanofpnw (previously founded YC-backed SaaS startup Cuboh) and @shraysi 🤝 Investors include Impellent Ventures, @hustlefundvc, Everywhere VC and baller angels like Jason Robins (DraftKings) & @jenny_rtr (Runway) read more

High Dopamine

• Another $10B AI Startup 💰
  Scale AI, a data labeling startup, nears $13B valuation in an @accelpartners-led round 🔥 The valuation represents a whopping 80% premium to its last round 📈 read more

• Tiger Global is Back…Kinda 🐯
  Tiger Global gathered $2.2B for its latest VC…well short of the $6B target 💸 The smallest fundraising haul in roughly a decade 🫠 read more

• Sponge for Sale 🧽
  Scrub Daddy, the dope sponge that was featured on “Shark Tank,” is looking to sell the company 🛍️ They’re backed by Lori Greiner and hired JPMorgan to explore sales options (they made $220M+ in revenue last year) 💰 read more

🐬 Deep Dive - Vizcom: Bringing Ideas to Life

This young startup is cooking up something special in the industrial design sector. Vizcom just raised a $20M Series A led by Index Ventures, bringing their total funding to $26 million at a $100M valuation.

“Another AI design tool, bruh.” Just hear me out.

While Adobe and Autodesk have dominated this space, Vizcom is aiming to shake things up by letting designers turn simple sketches into photorealistic renderings with natural language commands...in like 5 seconds.

Young & Hungry

Vizcom was born from the mind of Jordan Taylor, a 28-year-old design prodigy who used to build car prototypes as a kid and sold custom t-shirts. This dude's been ahead of the curve since 5th grade. Check out his cool PFP.

After stints at Honda and Nvidia, Jordan noticed the archaic workflow of manually tweaking designs in Photoshop. So he called up his middle school bestie, Kaelan Richards, and they holed up in Jordan’s living room, building Vizcom's AI-powered design platform.

The ingredients:

• Viral growth: with zero marketing, Vizcom has amassed an army of 4,700 YouTube subscribers and 23k+ Instagram followers by dropping sick demo vids of their software's capabilities.

• Fresh founders: at 28 years old, the duo brings relentless hunger and creativity. As investor Nina Achadjian said, "The passion and vision is not teachable." She's backed gems like Figma and Scale AI's young founders too.

• Expansive roadmap: Vizcom is just getting started. They plan to integrate more advanced AI, expand into 3D modeling, and ultimately go from digital render to 3D printed prototype with a few clicks.

So while Adobe and Autodesk have industrial design on lockdown today, Vizcom is rendering their future disruption. 

Now, get back to the grind 💌